As I help people deal with the impact both personal and work-related burnout, I usually begin by telling them that making fewer daily decisions will have a major impact on overcoming their sense of overwhelm. In response, they will often say, “I have to make all these decisions.” So I take them through a bit of an exercise to illustrate what I mean.
First, I ask them to draw a line down the middle of a page and write “work” on one side and personal on the other. Then I ask them to take three minutes to list all the daily decisions they make in each category. When they’re finished, they’ve listed the usual suspects. On the work side, they’ve written things like respond to customers, contact vendors, meet with the team, complete the projects my boss assigns. On the personal side, they’ve written items such as cooking dinner, grocery shopping, taking the kids to school.
Next, I ask them to drill down on their first waking hour of the day. What do they do in that first 60 minutes? How about in the first 60 minutes of work? These two questions bring more granular items such as grab breakfast, take a shower, check my phone on the personal side and clearing email, responding to texts or checking Zoom chat and dealing with issues that weren’t resolved from yesterday on the work side.
And herein lies the key to my argument. It’s not the decisions themselves that create feelings of burnout. It is the number of decisions we make every day. This is especially true of the decisions we are compelled to make. These include opt-ins, opt-outs, dealing with junk email, and following up on people who haven’t gotten back to you like they promised. Then there is navigating our online lives.
Have you ever spent three minutes, for instance, trying to access an on-line account you use every so often, but not constantly? Chances are, you begin by looking up the password and then typing it in a couple of times because you mis-keyed it the first time or you caps-lock was on. Then you are forced to go through two-factor authentication process. They send a code to your phone or email or you have to click on all the giraffes in a selection of images. And all this just to purchase office supplies or a find out whether a payment has been received. By the way, you might have to wait for the internet to load all these things since you’re working from home on a shared DSL. How many times a day do you do this type of thing? If it’s ten or more, chances are you’re making more than 100 decisions just to comply with someone else’s rules.
Then there’s the impact of social media. It’s the “helpful” suggestions that pop up on every site we visit, the number of micro decisions we make as we scroll through Linked In, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok and other apps. Each one of these choices, primarily yes or no, drains a bit of the sugar energy our brain depends on to focus. Taken cumulatively over days and weeks, is it any wonder burnout has become a major concern?
But it not just about the challenges we face in the digital world. It is all the on-hold times as we deal with in customer service, the unexpected traffic slow-downs that sap our attention and energy, and the delays in communication as we text or email back and forth with someone over two or three hours just to resolve a minor issue. In all of these cases, we are making more daily decisions than even a decade ago. The dread that comes with just managing all this daily is a symptom of burnout.
Finally, we miss people contact, which researchers have found over and over is a major source of renewal and comfort. Between the migration to digital communication from phone and in-person contact to the recent shift to remote and hybrid work, we are feeling more and more isolated. This detached existence prevents us from receiving the immediate feedback which allows for humor, commiseration, and other form of mutual support and empathy. Those just entering the workforce might say, “I don’t miss it.” But that’s because they have not experienced it in the same immersive way of those who grew up talking rather than texting or shaking hands in a meeting rather than waving to someone on a Zoom screen.
So, what can you do to begin reducing the number of decisions you make every day? Try the simple exercise I mentioned at the beginning. Every decision you DON’T make will help to conserve energy, maintain focus on the stuff that counts and provide room for a bit of the down time you need to recharge.